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Cauliflower Salad
4 to 6 pounds of cauliflower.
The hollandaise salad cream of the preceding receipt. A little oil and vinegar.
Cut the branches of the cauliflower in the right sized pieces for individual dishes while raw, trim the stems off evenly, let stand in a pan of cold water an hour or two. Set it on with plenty of cold water to cover it, to boil, and add salt, but nothing else. Cook till the thick stems will leave the fork as in boiling potatoes--an hour or less. Drain without breaking the pieces and set away to get cold.
Mix a little oil and vinegar with the cauliflower as well as may be by careful pouring from one bowl to another. Over each piece placed on individual dishes pour a spoonful of the salad cream, which should be thick enough to mask it and not run off in the dish.
Cauliflower salad is worth decorating. A few capers, French green peas shaken about in vinegar, some small patterns stamped out of beet slices, or a sprig of parsley.
For luncheon or a party dinner build up the cauliflower in pyramidal form, or like half a melon, with fork and knife, laying the pieces in order around the dish, the largest at the bottom, heads outward, and another tier on top of that, the salad cream to be poured over all, and decorate according to your taste.
A cold composed salad from the era when boiled vegetables under a thick dressing counted as an elegant course. Almost everything here still works; the cooking time does not.
- Cook it minutes, not an hourFlorets of this size are tender in 5 to 8 minutes in boiling salted water, and the stems will slip off a fork at that point. An hour reduces cauliflower to grey mush that cannot be lifted out unbroken, let alone stacked into a pyramid. Drain the moment a thin knife enters the thickest stem with slight resistance.
- "Branches"The florets. Cut them from the core with a little stem left on each so they hold their shape and can be trimmed flat to sit upright on the plate.
- Quantity4 to 6 pounds is roughly two or three large heads as bought; enough for eight to twelve individual servings.
- The cold-water soakAn hour or two in cold water would have helped draw insects out of field-grown heads, and it firms the florets. Fifteen minutes is plenty for supermarket cauliflower.
- Shock and dryThe original sets the cauliflower aside to cool in air. Cooling it quickly in ice water stops the carryover cooking, and it matters more with a short boil than a long one. Drain thoroughly and blot; wet florets thin the dressing and it slides off.
- Oil and vinegar firstThis is a light marinade, not the dressing: a few spoonfuls of oil and vinegar, poured from bowl to bowl rather than stirred so the pieces stay whole. Note that the original dresses the cauliflower only after it has gone cold.
- The salad creamThe preceding receipt is not reproduced here; from the way it is used, it is a thick cold salad dressing rather than modern hot hollandaise. Whatever you use, it must be thick enough to coat and cling; a thin mayonnaise or vinaigrette will pool in the dish and the presentation collapses.
- Building the pyramidAssemble on the serving dish itself, largest florets at the base with heads facing out, and chill the built stack before masking it with dressing. Warm or damp cauliflower will not hold a tier.
Cauliflower under a rich egg dressing belongs to the late nineteenth-century vogue for cold "dressed" vegetable salads, which are often said to have been served as a separate course between roast and sweet in imitation of French service. Cauliflower was a prestige vegetable in American markets of the period — demanding to grow, sold by the head rather than the peck, and thus worth the fuss of a decorated presentation. The instruction to boil in plenty of salted water and "nothing else" is notable, since various additions to the water were sometimes used to keep the heads white. The garnishes named — capers, peas rolled in vinegar, shapes stamped from cooked beet, a sprig of parsley — are standard *garde-manger* work of the era.